Baseball program San Quentin's model for easing racial tension

SAN QUENTIN - With the highly regarded San Quentin Giants hosting games twice a week, the exercise yard at the California prison sees much of its traffic make its way to the diamond at some point to watch.

Perhaps the most popular of all the physical rehab programs at San Quentin, the game attracts a fair share of inmates from all the groups around the yard. While it normally wouldn't be striking in any other situation, it is worth noting that prisoners often approach the backstop alone and avoid others.

This is part of the self-imposed racial segregation seen among the 1,000-plus inmates in the yard, a reality that is seldom avoided in San Quentin. One glance shows that - other than on the baseball field - races keep to themselves. Much of the segregation is gang-related, said Lt. Sam Robinson, the prison's public information officer.

"That's just the nature of prison as it is. Especially in here, with people from troubled backgrounds, these are men looking for people they can identify with and feel safe around," Robinson said. "The thing about the exercise yard, and the baseball team specifically, is that there is a significantly smaller chance of something going sideways racially because everyone knows their boundaries."

For the baseball team, there are few. Interaction between different racial groups is necessary and therefore common for men trying to improve themselves; for some, it's an opportunity that had never been afforded for them outside of prison.

"I wouldn't have associated with different races in the real world just because of where I was from," said Chris Rich, who before he came to San Quentin was raised in Levittown, N.Y. "Our team is really diverse. If you look around, you'll see groups sticking together. But in our dugout, there's whites, blacks, Mexicans. We have a diverse team."

Even the tangential aspects of the program see instances of racial commingling. San Quentin's three-man film crew, instructed earlier this year by the Discovery Channel in the ways of cinematography, consists of Giants shortstop Kenny Stallings, who is white, and two black inmates, Marvin Andrews and Troy Williams. Williams said that prison racism and segregation are part of a social construction that occurs before inmates ever arrive at San Quentin. Once they do, with the harbinger of violence already in place, racial diversity is just another cause for fear.

"What makes people commit a crime against another person is that they have to dehumanize them first," Williams said. "That's all racism is. It's changing a person into a color. Once you do that, it's easier to hurt race than it is to hurt a human. So guys get in here knowing that they're gonna be hated for what they look like, and they have to be defensive just to get by."

But, he said, being around San Quentin's Field of Dreams is different.

"It's a hard team to make. Everyone wants to play but you can't if you're not good. Doesn't matter what color you are," Williams said. "Once you start breaking it down like that, that your race won't hurt you or help you, it starts to change the way you think about it."

It's of little surprise, then, that the baseball field is a preferred spot for patrol guards, while the more clustered racial groups are left under the watch of snipers. What Lt. Robinson hopes for all of San Quentin's rehab programs to continue the trend of easing racial tension, for the peace of mind of everybody involved.

"Certainly, for us to feel at ease is important. For that to happen, often it means that the inmates have to be at ease, too," Robinson said. "The baseball program is a great example of that."